Raptor (The Zone Unknown) Read online

  Books by Pulitzer Prize-winner

  PAUL ZINDEL

  THE ZONE UNKNOWN

  Book One: Loch

  Book Two: The Doom Stone

  Book Three: Raptor

  Book Four: Rats

  Book Five: Reef of Death

  Book Six: Night of the Bat

  The Gadget

  YOUNG ADULT NOVELS

  The Pigman

  The Pigman’s Legacy

  My Darling, My Hamburger

  A Begonia for Miss Applebaum

  Pardon Me, You’re Stepping on My Eyeball!

  I Never Loved Your Mind

  The Undertaker’s Gone Bananas

  Confessions of a Teenage Baboon

  The Amazing and Death-Defying Diary of Eugene Dingman

  David and Della

  The Girl Who Wanted a Boy

  A Star for the Latecomer (with Bonnie Zindel)

  To Take a Dare (with Crescent Dragonwagon)

  P.C. HAWKE MYSTERIES

  Book One: The Scream Museum

  Book Two: The Surfing Corpse

  Book Three: The E-mail Murders

  Book Four: The Lethal Gorilla

  Book Five: The Square Root of Murder

  Book Six: Death on the Amazon

  Book Seven: The Gourmet Zombie

  Book Eight: The Phantom of 86th Street

  THE WACKY FACTS LUNCH BUNCH

  Book One: Attack of the Killer Fishsticks

  Book Two: Fifth Grade Safari

  Book Three: Fright Party

  Book Four: The 100% Laugh Riot

  SHORT STORIES

  Love & Centipedes

  Rachel’s Vampire

  PLAYS

  The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds

  (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize)

  The Secret Affairs of Mildred Wild

  Ladies at the Alamo

  Let Me Hear You Whisper

  And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little

  Every Seventeen Minutes the Crowd Goes Crazy

  The Ladies Should Be in Bed

  Amulets Against the Dragon Forces

  Published by Graymalkin Media

  www.graymalkinmedia.com

  Raptor

  Copyright © 1999 by Paul Zindel

  All rights reserved.

  Cover image © 2010 by Matt Stubbington

  eISBN: 978-1-935169-65-9

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGED THE HARDCOVER EDITION AS:

  Zindel, Paul.

  Raptor / Paul Zindel. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Zack and his Ute Indian friend find themselves trapped in a cave with a living dinosaur— the deadly Utahraptor.

  1. Utahraptor—Juvenile fiction. [1. Utahraptor—Fiction.

  2. Dinosaurs—Fiction. 3. Survival—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ10.3.Z263Rap 1998

  [Fic]—dc21 98-5330

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, recording, photocopying or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electric piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  http://www.graymalkinmedia.com/

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I wish to thank my brave friends Paula Danziger and Elizabeth Levy for teaching me what badlands, quicksand, and monsters to avoid. Much appreciation to my editor Erin McCormack Molta, who knows the secret lore of perilous watering holes and game trails—and without whom this book would not exist. Thanks to Lisa Holton, Lauren L. Wohl, and all my new extended family at Disney/Hyperion. Much thanks to Dorothy Neeley and my wonderful friends and students at Battle Mountain Junior High; also, appreciation to Ellen Rubin; Phyllis Minsch; Mary Beth Spore and Teri Lesesne; Julie Rusnak at Jakarta International School for arranging my visits to Balinese monkey forests and the secret lairs of Komodo dragons; Bandana Sen, Sara Zitto, and Patricia Sonnet at the American Embassy School who let me ride elephants and motorcycles in India; Gracelyn Fina Shea; Kathleen Miksis; Lucretia Lipper; the extraordinary brain engineers (librarians) Cindy Dobrez and Lynn Rutan; Hiroshi Kander; much appreciation for the dinosaur research and native American Scholarship of Professor Richard Cahill; thanks to author Dona Schenker; and my friends Kevin Rose, Sam Havens, Sue Spaniol.

  And special thanks to: my son, David; my daughter, Lizabeth; Mr. Ellis’s terrific kids at I.S. 34; and Gothal, the good and beloved witch.

  1

  THE NEST

  FLAMING GORGE, UTAH

  Professor Norak stopped dead in his tracks. This must be a joke, he thought. A few of his paleontology students were playing a joke. Very funny.

  He’d told everyone at the main dig that he was going to spend his day off exploring the caves and abandoned silver mine north of the dam. Two of the summer interns had already shown their twisted senses of humor by greasing up a bunch of triceratops gizzard stones and slipping them into a girl’s sleeping bag. The girl was one of those neatness freaks and she had run through the whole camp screaming. The professor could easily imagine the same kids stealing into the mine the night before and using chisels to fake the scratching, raking, and kicking marks. He had to laugh. They had made the imprints from talon feet much too large.

  “Quite a joke,” he told Mario, his pack mule, as he examined the “dinosaur nest.” The animal turned from the edge of darkness to stare at Professor Norak. It pawed at the ground, shuddered from a tick bite, then tried to tug its reins loose from the base of a stalagmite.

  Somewhere below—in the bowels of the network of rotting mine shafts and solution caves that riddled Silver Mountain—the murky shape of a mother lizard was looking for food near the base of a waterfall. She had searched for hours each day, ever since she’d felt motion beginning inside her eggs in the nest—a warning that there would soon be a dozen hatchlings clawing at her underside for food. Her instincts had told her it was time to gorge on blind mud fish and stubby-limbed bats—anything she could find hiding in the dark and damp crannies of the caves.

  Today she grazed along the edge of a subterranean stream, letting her heat-sensing tongue slip from the end of her snout. Suddenly, her tongue felt a hot, burning sensation near a cluster of rocks. She swung her weight onto one foot and kicked the pile violently aside. A visiting family of plump otters snarled and screamed and scrambled toward the cave stream—but the mother lizard was too fast for them. Her snout shot quickly left, then right, her jaws catching the otters by their heads, crushing each skull as though it were a grape. The burst of dripping warm brains soothed the back of her throat but baited her day’s hunger.

  When the last of the otters lay still and mutilated on the rocks, the mother lizard allowed herself to eat the fattest carcass. When she had finished, she leisurely chewed and swallowed the bloody pulp and bones of the others into her storage stomach. Soon she would regurgitate the half-digested feasts—to vomit strength and energy into the eager mouths of her brood.

  Professor Norak knelt for a closer look at the “nest.” A sharp, fetid smell tore up into his nostrils. Oh, you’re good, he thought about the student culprits. You must have laughed yourselves silly imitating a mother raptor building her nest. The marks from her birth ritual. A scattering of vegetation at the fringes as she would have set her hind legs, rigidly holding on to the rim with
deadly front claws.

  The light from a single Coleman lamp cast the shadows of Professor Norak and the mule high onto a quartz-veined wall. Mario snorted, drooled, and began to sidestep like a crab.

  “A mother dinosaur would have laid her eggs, spread a last layer of greenery, then straddled the mound.” Professor Norak spoke softly to the mule, trying to calm it. “She’d have snuggled and gently lowered her swollen belly. Her body heat would have generated steam. Ammonia. Decaying fern. Vapors drifting in the mine wind.”

  SCRATCH. SCRAAAATCH.

  Norak heard the distant sounds of scraping on stone and gravel being moved. A raccoon or possum, he thought. His hand touched something oval in the nest.

  He laughed out loud.

  Eggs!

  He could see his students shopping in a toy store, checking all the footballs and toss-toys they could marinate to look like the perfect dozen “dinosaur eggs.”

  SCRAAAATCH …

  More sounds. Something was approaching from one of the rear passages of the mine.

  Something bigger than a raccoon.

  A coyote, the professor thought now. A coyote or a bear that called the abandoned mine and caves its home. Or the sounds could be scratchings from hiding, giggling interns.

  “Hello,” Professor Norak called out to the blackness. “I’m on to your little hoax!”

  No one answered.

  A new, nauseating smell hit him. The mule began to bray and try to shake the bit from its mouth. “Take it easy, good buddy,” Norak said, standing as he held tightly to the single glistening egg. He went to pat the animal and assure it—but it spooked. Its hooves shot high into the air tumbling a cluster of stones and crashing the Coleman lamp to the floor. The light began to flicker.

  “Whoa,” the professor said. He fumbled to fix the lamp.

  THUMP.

  Another sound from the labyrinth of tunnels and caves was louder and closer. There came more scratching. A slight chill grabbed Norak in spite of himself. He tried to laugh it off, but now there were vibrations beneath his feet, as though a truck were barreling toward him.

  CLOSER.

  Big deal. A cassette player, the professor told himself. The interns had probably set speakers all over the place. Woofers and tweeters from any electronics store. It had to be all part of the prank. Still, Norak clutched the egg and started to retreat. He would return to the main dig and then send an Indian worker back for the mule. He began to jog toward the mine’s exit. It was a prank. A very elaborate prank.

  There was the flapping of small wings, and shrewlike mammals darted near his feet. Tiny green lizards appeared on the walls—spindly-legged chameleons with long tails and dark-crested eyebrows. The contacts of the lamp held for a moment. Norak looked behind him. He glimpsed the mule bucking madly.

  Tethered.

  Suddenly, beyond the animal, an enormous form began to emerge from the darkness. He saw a bounding shadow of pebbled, leathery skin racing toward him. It was the shape of a creature familiar to him from textbooks and years of exhuming bones. A thing he had studied his whole life.

  Oh, God. Oh, God …

  A scream erupted from deep inside Norak as the creature began to run upright with shining eyes, a flash of teeth, and its stiff tail protruding behind it.

  A raptor!

  Something extinct!

  Norak believed he was hallucinating. It was heatstroke or a rapture from the mine gas. His chest heaved with painful gasps as the raptor propelled itself forward with thick, powerful hind legs. Its enormous body cut a swath through twisted fingers of limestone. Its mouth was open revealing jaws the size of a bull crocodile and the serrated fangs of a meat eater.

  Shrieking, the raptor pounced on Mario, seizing the mule by its throat. The animal bleated as the raptor balanced on one hind leg, then quickly lifted its other leg high into the air. It thrust a single large claw into the mule’s underbelly, exploding blood and entrails out onto the ground.

  Again the claw was lifted and swung.

  And again.

  Within seconds, the carcass was reduced to a steaming, shredded heap of lymph and muscles and bowels. The raptor clamped its jaws onto one of Mario’s legs and shook the carcass like a rag doll. Blood splashed over the cave wall until the leg was ripped free. The raptor’s neck expanded as it swallowed it whole.

  Norak ran as in a nightmare. The Coleman lamp was dead now, and he hurled it away. There was light at the end of the mine shaft. His mind was out of control. A Utahraptor!

  Alive!

  Real!

  He thought the creature would stop, believed it would stay at its nest and protect its eggs.

  ROAR.

  It was after him, with shreds of Mario’s intestines hanging from its mouth.

  The ground behind Norak shook. He tripped and fell near the end of the tunnel. There was a snorting above, and he was lifted into the air, his legs dangling. The raptor held him with its small but muscular forelimbs, and began to turn him like a spider examining a fly. Norak felt the creature’s hot, stinking breath. He looked up hopelessly into the face.

  The raptor cocked its head to stare at him with outsized glassy eyes.

  ROAR.

  A thick green froth dripped from the bony slabs that were its lips. The raptor pinned him with a forearm against a slab of quartz. It slammed its free limb into the crystal, shattering it into a web of ruptures. Slowly, it slid a claw gently down the left side of Norak’s face.

  Norak’s body shook. Sweat poured from the pits of his arms as he looked into the cold, dark eyes of the monster.

  Jesus, help me…. Baby Jesus, help me….

  He realized he was still clutching the egg!

  With a single, violent headshake, the raptor’s teeth ripped the shirt from his body. Norak felt terrible pain now, as the raptor slowly pushed the point of its claw up into his chin. The tip moved higher, piercing a neck gland, then up into his gums like a thick dentist’s needle. Norak’s mouth filled with blood, and the world tilted madly.

  ANOTHER ROAR.

  Louder.

  Deafening.

  The ground and the walls around them began to shake and crumble. Chunks of dirt and stone and rotting beams fell away from the mouth of the tunnel. Suddenly, Norak was aware of sunlight crashing into the blackness. The earth opened up. The raptor dropped him, and he was falling.

  Rolling.

  Only now, the egg slipped from his grasp. He covered his face as branches of sagebrush ripped into his arms. In his last conscious moment, he heard the escalating scream of an avalanche and glimpsed the bloodied, disembodied head of his mule tumbling past him.

  2

  KILLING GROUNDS

  “That was your mom,” Mrs. Rosario called to Zack as she hung up the phone. “She wants you to meet her at the Dry Lakes airstrip. Pronto! Your father’s been in an accident.”

  Zack shoved the cooking spatula into the head grill chef’s hand. “What happened?” he yelled as he tore off his cooking apron and grabbed for his safety helmet.

  “A rockslide,” Mrs. Rosario said. “He’s been hurt badly”

  Zack was out the screen door of the Chile Cafe and into the parking lot. Don’t let him be in pain, he prayed for his father as he locked the helmet strap under his chin. He jumped onto his Yamaha 120, hit the kick starter, and the motor shrieked to life. He rode high until speed and the wind had cooled the leather seat down from the scorching badlands’ sun. Moving to Utah was a mistake, Zack had told his family from the beginning. A really big mistake.

  “Move it,” Zack yelled at a herd of cattle taking its time crossing a gulch. He braked, and punched the horn. Its loud honk was met by angry belching from the animals as they climbed a grass-clumped dune. He opened the throttle, jerked the front wheel of the motorcycle into the air for a moment, and then sped onward. The bike kicked up a dust cloud that trailed from the Jensen service road as far as the Drive Through the Ages—the paved tourist highway north.

  This whole dig
in Utah was an accident waiting to happen, Zack thought. In fact, it was an accident of nature—millions of years before—that had made the northeast corner of the state famous. A mountain had exploded and created a vast cloud of volcanic ash, a death cloud that had snuffed out the lives of thousands—millions!—of dinosaurs. Roaming among the landscape of monstrous skeletons were mobs of photo-starved tourists and save-the-whale students and geeky, stuck-up paleontologists who journeyed from all over the world to see a bunch of bones left behind by what turned out to be the complete extermination of the “terrible lizards” of Utah.

  RRRMMMM!

  Zack revved the motorcycle up to forty. Driving each day from his home to work at the Chile Cafe had taught him every inch of the south network of arroyos and washes. There were stretches that reminded Zack of what Mars must look like, miles upon miles strewn with yellow-gray mounds of stone and tilted, isolated buttes that rose sharply out of the valleys and naked hills. He’d taken brief drives to the north and glimpsed its vast, unexplored canyons and forests. There were gorges with eerie names like Disaster Falls and Screaming Wolf.

  He had read his father’s textbooks and seen drawings of creatures wiped out at the edge of a prehistoric swamp. Dinosaur National Monument was a Pompeii of predators like T. rex, the flesh-eating Tyrant Lizard King, and thousands of Deinonychus—also known as raptors. Entombed beside them, in the main quarry, were the bones of large herbivores, plant eaters like Diplodocus and Apatosaurus.

  Bad thoughts.

  Lately, Zack had been having nothing but bad thoughts about the university dig and his family’s move from Los Angeles. “Give it a chance,” his father had insisted. “If I’d been offered a job in L.A., I would have taken it.”

  Most everyone working on the project was ego-maniacal, especially Dr. Boneid, the head paleontologist on the dig. Boneid loved, if had not invented, his nickname: Dr. Bones.

  “He’s a death spirit,” Zack had heard one of the old Ute Indian workers say about him. “His heart is like death.”